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No kidding: James, Marquette get last laugh
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Also by Ben Voelkel:
- Rocky trip Outback for UW (January 1, 2008)
Related Stories:
- Point guard Hughes puts Marquette game behind (December 13, 2007)
- Badgers to test Golden rule (December 7, 2007)
- Madison's King of Queens (December 12, 2006)
- Super-Marquette Sweep (December 11, 2006)
- Poor ball control haunts Badgers (December 10, 2007)
by Ben Voelkel
Monday, December 10, 2007
Trevon Hughes found all the attention surrounding his
matchup with Marquette's dynamic point guard Dominic James pretty amusing
coming into Wisconsin's matchup with the country's No. 11 team.
"I kind of didn't come into this game as prepared as I was
last year," Hughes said after the game. "I just kind of took it as a joke."
After the game, you would be hard-pressed to find many
Badgers fans laughing.
Behind 20 points and six assists from James, Marquette (6-1)
ended Wisconsin's 28-game home court winning streak with an 81-76 victory over
UW (6-2) Saturday.
Hughes, meanwhile, scored 16 points on just 4-of-15 shooting
from the field and finished with four turnovers.
Much like Duke did 11 days prior, Marquette opened the game
intent on pushing the ball up and down the floor and getting Wisconsin into an
up-tempo game.
That approach yielded good looks for the Golden Eagles, as
MU shot 77 percent through the first eight minutes and built its largest lead
of the game — eight points at 21-13 — with 11:47 left in the first half.
"We wanted to push the ball, we wanted to get wide, and it
wasn’t as much about calling plays as it was about having our concepts right," Marquette
head coach Tom Crean said. "I thought our guys did an excellent job of
differentiating between what was there on the break and then when we had to set
up and make a play."
With Hughes struggling in the early going, Michael Flowers
began to bring the ball up the court and assume more of the primary ball-handling
duties.
The Badgers offense seemed to settle down after that, and UW
was able to fight its way back into the game, eventually cutting it to a slim
43-41 Marquette advantage at halftime.
The second half was a back-and-forth affair that saw seven
ties and four lead changes.
Coming out of the almost eight-minute media timeout tied,
Hughes made one of two free throws to give UW a one-point lead with 7:52
remaining in the second half.
The Badgers got careless with the ball after that, however,
turning it over on their next three possessions.
Just like that, the one-point lead was a four-point deficit,
one UW would never be able to completely overcome.
"It would have been nice to have kept that cushion,"
Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan said. "I tried to get [Butch] some rest in that
stretch, and then unfortunately, we had a couple guys get into a — I don’t know
what they got into, but we threw the ball away too many times, and then it was
hard to get that back."
The Badgers briefly tied the game at 64 with just less than
five minutes remaining, but the Golden Eagles responded by going on a 7-1
scoring run to open back the game.
Wisconsin was forced to go to a smaller lineup to try to come
back.
"We were playing from behind … get our quicker, more active
guys off the screens," Ryan said. "That's how you've got to play down the
stretch when you have to play from behind. If we were ahead, it wouldn't have
been the case."
While the Badgers gained quickness and perimeter defense by
going with a smaller lineup of guards Jason Bohannon, Flowers and Hughes, and
forwards Landry and Krabbenhoft, they also gave up their significant size
advantage.
That would prove deadly for Wisconsin, as Marquette held onto
and built their lead down the stretch by pounding the glass, specifically on
the offensive end, where the Golden Eagles pulled down five offensive rebounds
in the last 3:44 seconds of the game, converting those extra opportunities into
six points.
"I've coached against so many teams that were bigger than
the teams I've coached and out-rebounded them," Ryan said. "You still got to
get position, you've still got to go get the ball, and tonight just wasn't one
of those nights where we laid bodies on people. We weren't as fundamentally
sound on our blockouts, and it was pretty evident."
Perhaps the sequence that did Wisconsin in the most came
with the Badgers trailing 75-70 with 40 seconds remaining.
Needing a defensive stop, the UW defense forced MU guard
David Cubillan into a contested leaning 17-footer from a tough angle on the
left baseline. The shot clanged off the rim, but without Butch — the team's
leading rebounder (9.1 rebounds per game) — in the game, Marquette guard Wesley
Matthews was able to pull down the rebound over Krabbenhoft. Matthews was
subsequently fouled and made both free throws to essentially ice the game.
Anonymous (December 10, 2007 @ 8:13am):
"I kind of didn't come into this game as prepared as I was last year," Hughes said after the game. "I just kind of took it as a joke."
-Whoops. Accidental candid moment.
Anonymous (December 10, 2007 @ 5:38pm):
I hope Trevon isn't as lackadaisical preparing for his classes as he is for his games. If he is, he'll probably be academically ineligible next semester.
Anonymous (December 11, 2007 @ 12:39pm):
Maybe if we would recruit athletes instead of huge white guys we could keep up with teams like Marquette.
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